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New Comic Day hangover

Eventually, I will buy my comics on Wednesday instead of Thursday and get this thing back to its correct day. Until then, though – he we are! This week is a light one:

Legion of Super-Heroes #1 in which the new old Legion kicks off with a follow-up to an earlier story and a tie-in.

X-Factor #205 in which the team starts coming back together during Second Coming.

And X-Men Legacy #236 in which a whole bunch of characters make porn faces while crap goes down.

Spoiler-laced looks after the jump.

Legion of Super-HeroesAfter two separate reboots of the franchise, DC has brought the Legion back to its overconvoluted pre-Zero Hour state, but more in the state it was pre-Crisis as to leave out youthened clones and alternate reality Legionnaires, etc. This kicked off in a rather good story in Action Comics called Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes which politely placed a young Clark Kent back into Legion continuity. Despite some stories in Adventure Comics and the Final Crisis tie-in Legion of Three Worlds this is more of a follow up to that original story, which is fine. The more done to keep Legion desaturated, the better.

In itself, this story is pretty good, but to people looking to get an understanding of the Legion to jump on, this may not be the place. Someone needs to put out a 12 issue mini to explain the history of the Legion and where all these characters came from. Do you know Ultra Boy from Timber Wolf? Do you know that the current Invisible Kid is the second one? What happened to the original? Is the Triplicate Girl in pictures the original one? We need some kind of guide to get us on track. But for longtime Legion fans (like from the 80’s) this is probably a warm welcome home. And it’s pretty good.

X-FactorPersonally, I think that X-Factor is dealing with the whole ‘wiping out mutants’ bit of Second Coming better than the crossover itself. This issue basically has the team (split into four separate groups) fighting off their attackers while Jamie Madrox and Longshot have a narrative discussion on what this means to them and Cyclops’s bundle of mutants in California. It slowly moves the story forward, while also dealing with Strong Guy and M trying to save her father. All the pieces are coming together, but realistically, this tie-in could have probably been better served with just two issues.

X-Men: LegacyMore build-up with not a lot of story progress. Bastion has dropped an impentrible dome over Utopia and a chunk of San Fransico and the X-Men spend the entire issue running around not really doing anything. The payoff is a portal in the center of it unloading a host of Nimrods which will quite likely lead to the unfortunate demise of another C-list character. It did give us a cool splash page with the Avengers who quite sensibly showed up to investigate when San Francisco suddenly got a massive dome around it. We even got some snappy banter between Thor and Spider-Woman which was neat. We’re now in the 2nd half of this story and really not a whole lot has happened. But I’m still interested in where this is going and I’m sure it will read just fine once all the parts have come together.

But let me say something about the art. I’m usually not one to hop onto the Greg Land-hating bandwagon, but I thought the art in this issue flat out sucked. When Bastion’s dome showed up, we got a picture of several mutants dressed in the New X-Men/New Mutants ‘X’ costumes, but none of them were identifiable. One of them looked like Jubilee and one looked like Bishop, neither of which are on the island. In San Francisco, we get a shot of a girl’s reaction to the impact, complete with a face that looks like she was getting work done in the caboose. But my biggest problem? Magma is drawn flying in numerous panels, using an effect that looked more like either Cannonball or the Human Torch. Sure, Cyclops was using a jetpack (seen for the first time in about a year) but Magma was clearly not using one, and she cannot fly on her own. This really bothered me – how could that be added in and not spotted? She’s not Firestar (who doesn’t use the ‘flame on’ effect when flying) after all.

Next Week

Justice League: Generation Lost #2 brings in (the wrong) Blue Beetle to the mix.

X-Force #27 keeps the attack in San Francisco going, just without all the porn faces.

Astonishing X-Men #34 still doesn’t come out. As of now, it’s been pushed back to June 16th.